Downtown Urban Theater Festival Announces 2013 Season

Now in its 11th year, the Downtown Urban Theater Festival (DUTF) is becoming New York's premiere winter/spring theatre event showcasing independent theatre artists looking to bring their work to wider audiences while offering them the resources they require to succeed. The three-week festival, produced by Creative Ammo, Inc., rolls into HERE Mainstage in SoHo, NYC February 27 through March 16, 2013 with its unique brand of urban theater that provides writers from America's burgeoning multicultural landscape the opportunity to share their stories that interpret our history and our times.

The 2013 writers with their accepted plays are:

Adam Esquenazi Douglas (The Last Day of Oscar Wilde's Life)In a crumbling, French hotel room, infamous writer Oscar Wilde, mere steps away from his deathbed, recount his "last day alive."

Anselmo Martinez (Help Wanted)Left alone with an elderly man, a young caregiver has found himself in the middle of old, dwelling family issues when the man's daughter comes to visit.

Chima Chikazunga (3 the Hard Way)Ten years after 9/11, two grieving women try to deal with their emotional pain by attempting to go to see a staged reading of a well-known playwright in West Village, NYC.

D. L. Siegel (Chosen)A young Jewish woman must choose between her strict religious family and the boyfriend who may never truly belong.

Eric Dominique-Perez (El Gringuito)A red-headed Latino explores the ups and downs of finding acceptance in a Latino community where "you don't look like anyone around you."

Ismail Azeem (Rude)A Jamaican-American factory worker's life moves through dark alleyways and twisted corridors. Bedeviled by his past, traveling from the streets to an insane asylum, his psyche is a battleground.

James Earl Hardy (B-Boy Blues)When a Middle Class Boy meets Working Class Boi, the attraction is palpable and explosive. However, their lust affair does have some bumps in the road.

Jo Shui (True Asian Hottie)A true Asian hottie shares her simple story of being true to herself and the world.

Kate McCamy (The Bridge)When a Wall Street woman has been downsized she shops at Bloomies. Then walks across the Brooklyn Bridge where God appears before her, however he may not be God at all.

Keelay Gipson (Ni****/Fa****)A story about the meditation on race and sexuality as viewed through the prism of workplace politics.

Lavinia Roberts (The Rules of the World)This story is set in a Botanica in Bushwick, NYC run by a mid-forties woman, who is caring for her eccentric elderly mother. She is estranged from her transgender son, who is soon to be married.

Leslie Taylor (ButtaFlySoul for President)The journey of ButtaFlySoul from depression to unstoppable after a devastating break with his Jamaican boyfriend.

Liz Magee (The Attendant)In a women's restroom of a trendy bar in downtown Manhattan, a bathroom attendant is present throughout exchanges from women who enter to use the facilities. She struggles to bond with these women during their most private moments within the sanctuary that is the little girls' room.

Mila Golubov (Novaya Zemlya)From the Ukrainian country side to Brooklyn, USA, one family mix the shocking revelations over the last ten years with a healthy dose of youth libido and they have a lot of explaining to do.

Ming Peiffer (Pornography for the People)Sex! Surveillance! Censorship! This wacky mash-up of interwoven stories navigates Chinese "netizens" as they act out their fantasies and lives via the Internet.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano (The Prison Song)A story about the great time two cellmates are not having as one tries to adapt to his new life and the other is attempting to forget his past. All in the fantastic circus known as a jail cell.

In 2001, DUTF was founded with the purpose to build a repertoire of new American theatre that echoes the true spirit of urban life and speaks to a whole new generation whose lives defy categorizing along conventional lines. That purpose has been realized many times over, as more than 100 writers have created and refined their work for the stage and thousands of inspired audience members have applauded their performances. DUTF inaugurated the festival in 2002 at HERE in SoHo to help revitalize the NYC downtown arts scene, which, at the time, was experiencing a severe downturn due to the WTC disaster. It has been recognized as "one of the world's best festivals for new works" and described as "not only prestigious, but a slice of heaven for playwrights who want the chance to freely express themselves." (Lisa Mulcahy, Theater Festivals, Allworth Press, 2005)